Review of


Al-Amin Abu-Manga, Leoma Gilley. Anne Storch (eds), Insights into Nilo-Saharan Language, History and Culture. Proceedings of
the 9th Nilo Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, 16-19 February 2004, Köln, Rüdiger Köppe Verlag, 2006, 420 pp

Stanisław Piłaszewicz

STUDIES IN AFRICAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

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The proceedings are crowned by an article „Suffix petrification and prosodies in Central Chadic (Lamang-Hdi)” (pp. 141-154). Its author, H. Ekkehard Wolff first points to a kind of weird relationship between consonants and vowels in the Hausa words for „goat” and „horse”, and then looks at two very closely related Central Chadic languages: Lamang and Hdi. There is an amazing lack of regular phonetic correspondences between those languages. The author tries to explain and justify this phenomenon making use of the historical phonology of hausa.Stanisław PiłaszewiczAl-Amin Abu-Manga, Leoma Gilley. Anne Storch (eds), Insights into Nilo-Saharan Language, History and Culture. Proceedings of the 9th Nilo Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, 16-19 February 2004, Kôln, Rüdiger Kôppe Verlag, 2006,420 pp.This book contains 25 contributions to the 9th Nilo-Saharan Linguistics Colloquium that was held at the Institute of African and Asian Studies, University of Khartoum. It was merely the second one of this type, after that of Kisumu in 1986, which took part on the African soil. As it is stated in the Preface, in Sudan, the host country, all the six branches of the Nilo-Saharan family are represented, either as native or immigrant languages. Judging form the names, more than ten papers were presented at the Colloquium by Africans: nine papers included into the volume under review were written by the Sudanese citizens. One has to notice that some languages discussed in this volume do not belong to the Nilo-Saharan languages or their affiliation is presently a subject of discussion.The Proceedings start with an article by Suzan Alamin Muba­rak (pp. 9-25). It is an initial description of the Laggori language, which is spoken in the Southern Kordofan and belongs to the Daju group. At the beginning of her presentation the author reminds us that languages out of three of the four African language families are spoken in Sudan. Further on, the paper focuses on the investigation of the morphological structure of the Laggori noun and noun phrase: their study is based on a 200 wordlist provided by native speakers.172Derivational forms and the nature of modifiers in Tennet (pp. 25-21) are dealt with in a short contributions by Adelino Amargira. It is the smallest member of the Southwest Surmie language group, spoken by some 4.000-10.000 people in five home villages and by the immigrant groups in large Sudanie towns. Since Tennet has not an open class of adjectives, special attentions is paid to modifiers that can be derived from nouns and static verbs.The aim of the paper by Abeer M.A. Bashir (pp. 33-50) is to shed light on the morphophonemic alternations that occur in the for­mation of the singular/plural noun forms in Junjum, a poorly docu­mented Western Nilotic language. It is spoken in the southern part of the Blue Nile state, in south-eastern Sudan. In some African lan­guages known to me „mountain” is „a big stone”: in Junjum, on the contrary - „stone” is a „small mountain” (p. 35).A long-standing interest of S. Baldi in Arabic loan-words bor­rowed by African languages has given voice in his contribution on the loan-words that have entered numerous African languages through Kanuri (pp. 51-74). Those languages could be classified in four groups: 1. Chadic languages, 2. languages belonging to different language families, but spoken in a nearby area, 3. Fulfulde and Hausa, and 4. Dagbani and Yoruba, which got many Arabic words through Kanuri and Hausa. The author takes into account 72 Arabic loans that were found in the above mentioned languages.The study of Herman Bell points to an urgent need to save the Birgid Nubian language of Darfur, which actually is on the verge of extinction (pp. 75-83). The author calls upon the linguists to under­take a co-ordinated study of existing documents on Birgid (that are shortly presented by him), along with further field work. Finally, he proposes a strategy for preserving Birgid, which „[...] has and will continue to have a growing importance for the speakers of Nubian languages and their descendants”. It is interesting to note how Birgid had been altered, when it seemed useful to conceal information from the tax collectors early in the twentieth century (p. 76).Having discussed fourteen sample texts covering different top­ics, Ali Obeid Birema (pp. 85-100) demonstrates in his article the extent of the shift of the Kordofan language of Kadero („[...Jone of the daughters of Ajang” - p. 85) towards the Sudanese colloquial Arabic. The average borrowing is about 47%: this result shows that 173Kadero should be classified among the endangered languages. The author reminds of the necessity to study and document such lan­guages „[...] before they vanish sooner or later and take their treas­ures and secrets with them”.The content of Roger Blench’s contribution (pp. 101-127) is clearly seen from its title: „The Kadu Languages and their Affilia­tion: Between Nilo-Saharan, Niger-Congo and Afro-Asiatic”. These languages, previously grouped with the Kordofanian languages of the Nuba area, and later on held to be Nilo-Saharan, display the presence of well-established Niger-Congo roots. Summing up, the author comes to conclusion that Kadu do not constitute an isolate group but rather are the result of convergence of their Nilo-Saharan origins and borrowing from Niger-Congo and perhaps Afroasiatic.The Central Sudanie languages are grouped as a branch of Nilo-Saharan phylum and are spoken in five African countries: D.R.C., Uganda, Sudan, Chad and C.A.R. Pascal Boyeldieu (pp. 129-151) in his article tries to provide some evidence for correspon­dences involving articulations of labiovelar type in six language sub­groups. The question of the exact phonetic nature of these conso­nants remains open. They may be identified either as labialized velar stops (*kw, *gw, etc.) or as doubly articulated labial-velar stops (*Ap, *gb, etc.).The problem of the classification of the Sudanie languages is dealt with by Rihab Yahia Dafalla in his article „A Phonological Comparison in the Katcha-Kadugli Language Group of the Nuba Mountains” (pp. 153-172). Most linguists have classified them in the Niger-Kordofanian family. Others either have placed them in the Nilo-Saharan family or considered them as a family unto themselves. Having made a phonological comparison of the Katcha-Kadugli languages, the author has classified them geographically into three groups and pointed to the necessity of further research in this respect.The tonal behaviour of one class of singular-forming nouns in the Kamda language is discussed by Edward Hall (pp. 173-181). Kamda is spoken in Nuba Mountains and belongs to Kadu (known also as Talodi-Kadugli) languages that are seriously endangered. The language is known from marking nouns for the singular: this phe­nomenon is the subject matter of the paper. On p. 180 due to a mis­print „chief’ became „thief’!174Khalifa Jabr el Dar in his contribution (pp. 183-198) has evaluated three possible writing systems (Arabic, Old Nubian and Roman) and then, having discussed the phonologies of representative Ajang languages, tried to define the symbols that would be needed to write all the languages with a single orthographic system.Computational linguistics has been used by Marcus Jaeger (pp. 199-214) in the analysis of Kenuzi-Dongolawi. This language is spoken today in two distant areas, Kenuzi in Egypt, and Dongolawi in the Sudan. After the building the Aswan High Dam, two groups of speakers found themselves 800 km apart from each other. Having used a software package named „Shoebox” the author realised that on the word level the Kenuzi dialect of the Kenuzi-Dongolawi lan­guage is much more in decay than the Dongolawi dialect. It is due to the fact that in the past Kenuzi speakers allowed more language as­similation and borrowing from Arabic within their dialect.In her study on the loss of syllable-final Proto-Nubian conso­nants (pp. 215-228) Angelika Jakobi has proved that each Nubian language is characterised by a distinctive pattern and amount of con­sonant loss. Reconstructed Proto-Nubian items have been compared with their equivalents in Old Nubian, Nobiin, Ke-Do, Birgid, Tagle, Karko and Midob. According to the author, Midob is the language in which the largest variety of Proto-Nubian consonants are deleted.The verbal matrix in Didinga, an Eastern-Sudanic language of the Southwest-Surmic group, has been presented by Nicky de Jong (pp. 229-242). In the first part of his paper, a number of characteris­tics of the form of the verb and verb phrase is given. In the second part, the reader is acquainted with the distribution and function of these matrix forms in the narrative and procedural discourse.James Lokuuda Kadanya describes noun derivation system in Toposa (pp. 243-261), an Eastern Nilotic language spoken in South­ern Sudan. His investigation has revealed twelve means of nominali- zation that cover all areas of nouns derived from verbs.The paper written by Eileen Kilpatrick (pp. 263-277) presents the pronouns system of the Moru-Ma’di languages from the Central Sudanie group: Avokaya, Moru Misa, Wa’di, Ma’di Lukai, Aringa, and Keloko. These languages are spoken in southern Sudan, northern Uganda and north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The shape of the pronoun depends mainly on word order of the clause and 175whether it refers to subject, object or some other constituent.The role of tone in Lendu Locatives is discussed by Constance Kutsch Lojenga (pp. 279-294). Lendu is a Central-Sudanic language spoken in the north-east of the Democratic Republic of Congo, along the western shore of Lake Albert. According to the author, locative postpositions and locative adverbs appear in two tonally contrastive forms that display a semantic contrast: location versus direction.Richard A. Lobban in his contribution (pp. 295-308) under­takes a further effort to decipher Meroitic language with the use of the computerized strategy. This time he turns to the Meroitic inscrip­tion by King Karamodoye at the Kalabsha temple dedicated to the Nubian god Mandulis. The computer-assisted approach helped the author locate a few more words, but the broader decipherment of the inscription is still far ahead.In his paper (pp. 309-326) Robert Guy McKee suggests that the Meegye connective bhe functions in oral tale narrative largely as a developmental marker. Therefore, it is glossed variably: sometimes as ‘and’, ‘then’, or ‘and then’; sometimes as a weak ‘so’, ‘so then’, or ‘but’; and even sometimes as ‘nothing’.The study presented by Farid M.A. Mekkawi (pp. 327-333) fo­cuses on comparisons between Nilotic Nubians (Mahas/Fadichhe and Dongolese/Kenzi groups) and Kordofanian Nuba (Ajang) in areas such as genealogies, family relations, names and naming, kinship terms, and folk culture including legends, tales, songs, poetry, etc.Tones and verb classes in Bongo, a Central Sudanie language from the Bongo-Bagirmi group, spoken in the Bahr al-Ghazal region of Sudan, are discussed by Pierre Nougayrol (pp. 335-345). He dis­tinguishes four classes of verbs defined by the behaviour of the tones.The paper presented by Suleiman Norein Osman (pp. 347-361) is a tentative endeavour to analyse some phonological features of the Zaghawa language (Wegi dialect) that is spoken in Darfur by some 180.000 people. The Wegi dialect constitutes the largest ethnic group within the Zaghawa tribe. The languages of Darfur face the processes of shift and death that have begun already. The author re­minds us „[...] that every language which disappears is likely to take an entire culture (in its broadest sense) with it forever”.176Eva Rothmaler discusses in her article (pp. 363-376) various names of the inhabited places in Borno, a multiethnic region domi­nated by speakers of Kanuri, a Saharan language. She comes to a conclusion that the Kanuri suffixes ri and - ram can easily be com­bined with wbrds from other languages, no matter from which lan­guage family.The problem of possession of alienable and inalienable nouns in Gaahmg, an Eastern Sudanie language spoken in the Upper Blue Nile Province of Sudan by some 100.000 people, is discussed by Timothy M. Stirtz (pp. 377-392). According to his findings, alienable nouns are formed with the possessor following the possessed noun, whereas inalienable nouns, body parts and kinship terms, are formed with the possessor preceding the possessed noun.The contribution by Anne Storch (pp. 393-402) provides an analysis of the verbal tense and aspect system of Luwo, and com­pares the system with its equivalents in other Luwo languages. She is of opinion that an aspect-oriented analysis suits the system much better than a tense-based approach.-Si marker in Fur, a Nilo-Saharan language of the Darfur prov­ince of Western Sudan and in the bordering area in Chad has been reconsidered by Christine Waag (pp. 403-410). In reality, there are two -si markers, one of which carries a high tone, the other one a low tone. The author goes into detail about their meanings and usage.The final paper of the volume, presented by Richard Lobban (pp. 411-420), has an extra-linguistic character and deals with some issues in the Darfur conflict. Having pointed to multi-factorial, inter­active and changeable causes of the conflict, the author has provided some reflections on how to move from the current state to negotia­tions, conflict reduction and management.The Proceedings have been edited with a great care and in an exemplary way and are almost devoid of misprints. The only thing I miss in it is the lack of information on the contributors and on their affiliation.Stanislaw Pilaszewicz177

Al-Amin Abu-Manga, Leoma Gilley. Anne Storch (eds), Insights into Nilo-Saharan Language, History and Culture. Proceedings of the 9th Nilo Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, 16-19 February 2004 (review)

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Al-Amin Abu-Manga, Leoma Gilley. Anne Storch (eds), Insights into Nilo-Saharan Language, History and Culture. Proceedings of the 9th Nilo Saharan Linguistics Colloquium, 16-19 February 2004 (review)

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